Vauld halts trading, deposits, and withdrawals

TL;DR

Vauld's Announcement
Vauld announced a 30% workforce reduction

Vauld's Announcement

Vauld is a Singapore-based crypto platform, backed by Coinbase, and founded by Darshan Bathija and Sanju Soni Kurian. It allows users to buy, sell, lend, borrow, and trade cryptocurrency assets from a single integrated platform.

Recently Vauld released a statement in which they mentioned that the market's downward trend had an impact on it, and they made the decision to halt trading, deposits, and withdrawals. Darshan Bathija, CEO of Vauld, said in the statement:

"This is due to a combination of circumstances such as the volatile market conditions, the financial difficulties of our key business partners inevitably affecting us, and the current market climate which has led to a significant amount of customer withdrawals in excess of a $197.7 million since 12 June 2022 when the decline of the cryptocurrency market was triggered by the collapse of Terraform Lab’s UST stablecoin, Celsius network pausing withdrawals, and Three Arrows Capital defaulting on their loans."

Vauld has thought over the situation and determined that immediate action would be best for all stakeholders involved. They have engaged with the services of Kroll Pte Limited as a financial advisor and Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP and Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas as their legal counsel in Singapore and India, respectively.

The management of Vauld has said that they are still dedicated to working as closely as they can with their legal and financial experts to explore and analyze all possibilities, including prospective restructuring options, that would best serve to protect the interests of Vauld's stakeholders. CEO of Vauld further added:

"We are confident that, with the advice of our financial and legal advisors, we will be able to reach a solution that will best protect the interests of Vauld’s customers and stakeholders."

Vauld announced a 30% workforce reduction

Last month, Vauld has reduced its manpower by 30% which was also due to the market's downtrend. Darshan said in that statement, "This is not a decision we take lightly but given the economic slowdown, we concluded that this was the right course of action." He further added:

"The bias is because we're slowing down efforts associated with those teams. We are working with each person affected and pay them two months of their salaries as a severance payment and ensure that they retain their signing and/or joining bonus"

Additionally, the company has scaled down hiring initiatives, reduced Executive compensation by roughly half, and put a halt to the majority of vendor engagements. Further, vauld stated that it will offer the impacted individuals and their immediate families 12 months of medical insurance.